


The Narrow Passage (The Vertiginous Remix)

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gender Issues, Incest, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-26
Updated: 2008-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>At the narrow passage there is no brother, and no friend.</i> ~Arabic proverb</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Narrow Passage (The Vertiginous Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Keep Your Hands Off My Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1606) by Kellifer_fic. 



> I owe a lot of people thanks. They know who they are, but foremost among them is Kel herself for writing such a compelling story. I truly hope I've done it the least bit of justice.

"Do you remember?"

It's only a few days later. Sam's voice is hoarse with the smoke that still permeates what's left of his things, their skin, Dean's jacket, the Impala. Everything. Everything that's left, now that Sam's girl is dead and Dad is God only knows where.

Dean isn't sleeping any more than Sam is. He rolls over in a dry creak of bedsprings, scrubbing tiredly at his gritty eyes. "Remember what?"

"When you were her."

Dean freezes mid-stretch. Whatever he'd been expecting—hunting, them being kids, Mom burning up—it wasn't that. Him and Sammy—Sam—must not be all _that_ different, though, because Dean knows exactly who and what Sam means. "Uh, yeah. Of course."

Because being stuck in someone else's body—in your brother's _girlfriend's_ body—is something that you _ever_ forget?

Just the mention calls up memories Dean just as soon forget: small hands, small feet, the disorienting sense of being off-balance—in more ways than one. Too much hair, slipping through his fingers and getting in his eyes.

"How much? What do you remember?"

Dean doesn't understand the jagged urgency of Sam's voice or the weird, tense set of his shoulders when Sam sits up in a slither of blankets, a black cutout in a gray-lit room.

Dean pushes up too, a whisper of cold that has nothing to do with the vague November chill whistling its way down his spine. He needs to cut his damn toenails; the big one's snagging on the sheet. "I don't know." He licks his bottom lip, teeth picking at the dry skin. "Stuff. Memories."

"Her memories? Or yours?"

Dean shrugs. "Both, I guess." This is giving him the creeping willies. Big time. Dean wishes he'd gone to sleep in his tee-shirt to ward against the goose-bumps he can feel studding his back. "Jesus, Sam, what the fuck does it matter _now_?"

It's not that he's trying to be a prick about it or anything. He gets that Jess was Sam's girl, that Sam really…really _loved_ her. Dean's not that dumb. But Jess is _dead_ , killed by the same whatever it is that killed their mom. They don't have time to linger over the ghosts of the dead.

Only to salt and burn them.

Sam doesn't answer right away. The light is behind him and Dean can only see him solidly black and rigid as rock, head bowed. Dean feels his eyes anyway, though, like a burn. He doesn't know how to make this better for Sam. He feels bad about Jess, sure. It's a rotten goddamn shame and Dean will gladly throw a bullet or six in the sonofabitch that did it to her—and Mom—but Sam's the one he's worried about. Sam was always one to…get attached.

Dean would just about give his left nut to make it different.

Dean sighs. "I remember, okay? You don't spend a week in somebody's body and not…remember things." He'll never admit it, but Dean flinches a little when Sam shoves up off the other bed and comes across to his, his stomach fluttering and weird. He and Sam haven't shared a bed in years, not since Sam shot up like a weed and got too grownup to need the protection of his older brother.

As Sam crams in with him, Dean tries to imagine huddling up with his brother the way they used to when Sam was little. He tries to imagine himself, a grown man, putting his arms around Sam and _not_ getting his eye blacked or his ribs elbowed or—worst of all—tickled. "It's been two years, man," Dean says. It comes out weak, almost breathless. He flinches deeper when Sam's hands fumble through the dark to touch and frame his face. "It…it doesn't help us now."

"Be her." It's a little like Dad's voice. That same kind of command that takes no shit and brooks no argument. But at the same time, it's Sammy—not even Sam; _Sammy_ —begging Dean to keep him safe from the things in the dark. "I want… Be her for me."

Dean opens his mouth and Sam's thumbs sweep in to cover his lips. Dean goes still, except for his heart, banging against his ribs.

"Close your eyes."

Dean does. It just seems…easier.

"You said you remember. So… Remember. Be her. Be Jess."

***

 _It's that last day._

Just the two of them, sitting on Bobby's back steps and colored red by the sun going down. Wind blowing trash and making music from twisted metal. Sometimes, Dean thinks he loves this just as much as the sight of the mountains rising up from the ground or the year's first snowfall or anything else you might find on a calendar or Hallmark card.

"How old were you?" Jess asks, after a long time of sitting silent. "When you knew the things in the dark were real?"

He doesn't want to tell her, even now. Not really. But he figures they're past all that now. Oldest law there is, maybe. Get inside a girl's body and you owe her something. Nobody said that only meant sex. "Four."

Her fingers—which are really his _fingers—creep into his, hidden by their bumping shoulders and jostling knees. "I can't even imagine."_

He shakes his head. "No reason you should."

Jess gestures awkwardly with a shoulder. It takes him a minute to realize she's trying to toss her hair back, except his body doesn't have enough hair to make it worthwhile. She does that a lot, he realizes now, thinking about it. The same way that he keeps reaching to adjust a dick that's no longer there. It's fucked up and funny at the same time, though Dean doesn't feel much like laughing.

"I'm not going to remember this."

It shocks him, he won't lie. He turns his head but Jess keeps looking straight ahead, squinting into the sun and Bobby's old junk. She's been putting lip balm on his mouth; the skin's healing up and his lips look moist, flushed.

"When she asks me about it…about what I want her to do, I'm going to tell her…I want to forget. Forget all of it."

Her fingers shake a little, closed around his, and then she squeezes tight.

\+ +

Dean feels it coming, the second time. Even before the Wendigo grabs Roy, Dean knows Sam's been dreaming about Jess, that Sam's full up with missing her. He knows Sam's watching him, only flicking away when Dean tries to look back, meet him head-on. He feels it on his skin, like heat, like a fever, like a rash, itchy and uncomfortable and weird.

The truth is that he thought it was a one time thing, the two of them in the dark. The next day Sam had acted like nothing had happened, like things were no different, like he'd never crammed into Dean's bed, like he'd never said those creepy, electrifying words: _Be her._

Dean doesn't feel anything about it, one way or the other. It was something he'd done. For Sam. There are no rules when it comes to little brothers. To family. You do what you have to.

Doesn't stop him from feeling a quavery flutter in his stomach every time he almost-catches Sam looking at him that way, knowing what's coming.

 _Be her._

He's been thinking a lot about Jess himself lately. Thinking about the choice she'd made—to forget what had happened. To go back.

 _"Sam left that life, left the hunt. If I know, if I remember…then I'm a part of it. All I can ever do is remind him of everything he left behind."_

Dean had had the same choice. To forget.

Not everything, obviously, but the choice had been there to forget those days in a woman's body—in _Jess's_ body—memories sloughed away like a page torn from a notebook, leaving only bled-through scratches, barely visible.

But Dean's not that guy. Never has been. His eyes were opened once and in some ways—most ways—it feels like he's never closed them again.

So afterwards, when they're in the car—didn't even make it to the motel—and Sam's holding Dean's face between his hands and saying, "Tell me. Tell me something, anything—" Dean closes his eyes, takes a breath and lets the strange overlay of not-quite memories rise to the surface.

"V-violets. Her favorite flowers were violets, African violets and she…"

"No." The bones of Sam's hands press into the bones of Dean's jaw. "Not like that. Like her. Be her."

Dean remembers being her. Remembers…Sam; a different Sam than the Sam he'd always known. He remembers Jess's Sam and the brilliant supernova in her heart that was as near a twin to the one in his as he'd ever found.

"You used to buy them for me," Jess says, breath catching on a laugh. "Every stinky, half-dead drug store violet you came across, looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes, begging me to kiss it and make it all better…"

Sam groans, a deep, shattered noise, and then crushes his mouth down on Jess's, crushes his whole body to hers as if he can fuse their bodies into one and make them inseparable. "Jess…Jess, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

"Shhh. It's okay. It's all right, Sam, I'm here. I'm right here…"

\+ +

 _"Sam left that life, left the hunt. If I know, if I remember…then I'm a part of it. All I can ever do is remind him of everything he left behind." Jess worked his jaw a few times, still staring blind off into the distance. "And he'll leave me, too."_

"He wouldn't do that."

There's more than his fair share of bitterness in the words, but he doesn't think Jess hears it at all when she jerks and turns to look at him. "You don't think so?" He doesn't like the way she uses his voice, softening all the gruff out of it, swapping in laid-back California vowels for Midwest twang. "He left you, and far as I can tell, he loves you more than anything in the world."

He doesn't know how she can have it so wrong, so backwards. Doesn't know how to explain the difference to her—the way Sam is with her, the way he was with Dean when he thought Dean was Jess. Just thinking of it makes him shiver now _, rubbing his borrowed hands up and down his borrowed arms. "It's not the same."_

Jess shakes her head, huddled in on herself as well. "I can't take that chance."

\+ +

They don't talk about it.

It's more than their usual 'don't talk about it', though Dean's hard-pressed to put his finger on the exact _how_. Their life breaks into two halves of unequal portion, neither one completely of the day or night.

Sam only comes to him in the dark, only makes Dean recount from the gauzy and fading recollections of Jess then, the sight of him—of _Dean_ —too much for the fragile illusion. During the day, it's business as usual—so much so that Dean wonders how deep the crack goes, if Sam's broken into two totally different people, Jekyll and Hyde.

That's where the metaphor peters out, because Dean doesn't know how to tell which is which. Day Sam—he's everything Dean remembers. He bitches and moans about the music, about the lack of leg-room in the Impala, about the cheap motel rooms and cheaper food. He hates hunting, even though he's _damn_ good at it and sometimes Dean thinks Sam hates him too, for dragging him back to this.

But there are other times Sam acts different, looks at him different, tiny peeks of Night Sam coming through like weak signal through static. He flattens his hand in the small of Dean's back, guiding him like he'd guide a girl a prom, sticks Dean on the inside of the sidewalk. His irritated and embarrassed commentary about Dean's girls will turn unexpectedly into _outrageous_ cockblockery, Sam cold and mean like Dean's never seen and now Dean's getting laid the least he's been since…well, ever.

 _Dean_ is.

But even that line is blurring.

There are nights when Sam doesn't come over from his bed, nights he falls straight to sleep, nights he just must not miss Jess enough or something…and Dean just waits. Sometimes he'll try to fence it around with other things—practicing his stakeout skills, insomnia, the gas station burrito he ate that morning for breakfast—but it all breaks down to the same thing. He's waiting. He's waiting for Sam.

Nights when it does happen and Sam will be _right there_ , with him, and he's not really Jess anymore, but he's not quite Dean, because Dean hasn't done this with anyone in more years than he wants to remember. Not just lying and breathing and feeling the other person with you. Not even with Cassie.

Nights he'll wind some pretty chickie up, strutting and preening and flirting with all his considerable expertise and it'll hit him—he's not going anywhere with this girl. He doesn't even _want_ to go anywhere with this girl. He's doing all this for Sam's benefit. Trying to make Sam react, see him.

And from there, it's a short step to the realization he wants Sam to see _him_. Dean.

Oh, that's just _fucked up._

\+ +

 _The ritual takes a long time—even longer because Dean keeps fidgeting, bored and half-convinced this is some giant put-on by Bobby and the shaman woman, Madelyn. In any case, it's the dark shroud of night, when even the stars have gone to their beds by the time Sam's set to go, Jess sleeping and limp in his arms like a corpse bride._

Dean doesn't remember Sam's face. He's too busy watching the way Sam's hands cradle Jess's body, remembering what it felt like to be inside that body with Sam's hands touching it in not-brotherly ways. Not slap-shove-pull-yank. Not dumbass-bitch-jerk.

"Jesus, Sam, I _can drive you," he says and he must be coming down with something, the way his throat's aching. Murphy's fucking Law, he's back in his own body just in time for it to get sick. Typical._

"Nah. Madelyn says it's important to keep her surrounding with the familiar for a while," Sam says, sneakers shuffling up dust from the dead ground. It sounds like something he's reading off a card. "If she sees you… If she sees you, she might remember."

"Oh. Yeah. Sure." Dean does his own dirt shuffle, hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders squared. He thinks about what Jess said: "If I know, if I remember…then I'm a part of it. All I can ever do is remind him of everything he left behind."

But Jess isn't the only reminder out there.

It hits him then, what this is. Not just Sam heading off to college for a while, or hey, man, catchya later _, but goodbye._

Really goodbye _._

"You should call me, though," Sam continues, getting Jess into the passenger's seat of the van he borrowed from Bobby, strapping her in. Dean watches Sam fold Jess's arm into her lap and then caress his fingers through her hair before he shuts the door and turns back to Dean, all business, itching to go. "Check in. Let me know you're alive."

"Yeah. 'Course." Dean scratches his neck because it lets him keep his head tilted down, keeps him from having to look Sam in the eye. Like he hasn't given the exact same line to God knows how many girls after the fucking's done. That's what they're talking about, right? Sam goes off with the girl and Dean…

Dean's fucked. __

He's so focused on not really looking at Sam that Sam throwing his arms around him comes as a complete surprise. He doesn't fight it though, letting Sam fold him in and hold him there. They fit differently now that Dean's in his own body, but they still fit.

Goodbye, _Dean thinks._ Goodbye, Sammy. Goodbye, Jess.

Goodbye.

\+ +

In the darkness, the first thing is Sam's voice.

"…can't leave me, Dean, you can't. I know I've done some fucked up things, but how'm I supposed to make it right if you die on me?"

Dean feels…strange. Disembodied.

The thought should be frightening. His last, fragmented memories are of pain. Crackling, jolting, electric agony, burning him from the inside out. The sweet pork smell of his own skin frying.

And now there's nothing. Nothing but the croaking run of Sam's voice, as though he's been talking a long time.

"I should've… I should've done everything so different. Told you the truth." Sam breathes, cracked and rasping, filled with the wavering sound of choked back tears. "It was just easier to make you think…Jess. That that's all it was."

It's like Dean gets closer—closer to Sam, closer to his missing body—and the pain comes back. Not like before, sharp and toothy; now it's bone-bruise dull, aching across his hold chest, pinning him flat beneath it.

"That was _never_ all it was, Dean. Never. And that's why you have to be okay. So I can tell you that. So I can tell you I'm sorry. So I can make it right."

"I remember that last day." Dean doesn't mean to speak but he opens his eyes and the words spill out. He opens his eyes and he's where he knew he had to be—the hospital—Sam right there like Dean knew he would be. His hand lies sandwiched between Sam's like a dried bundle of sticks nearly colorless against healthy brown.

Sam's breath catches, pupils blowing huge despite the even brightness of the fluorescents overhead. "Dean."

He says it, says _Dean_ like he used to say _Jess_. Though, Dean realizes now, Sam hasn't called him that in months. Hasn't said the words ( _be her_ ). Dean had just taken it as given. He's afraid to think of what that means.

"I remember you were leaving with her and I knew she was right. She was right to forget. Because she forgot and she got you. She won." That's not all of it, but Dean doesn't know how to say the rest of it, the unfamiliar words fumbling and sticking across his slow, clumsy tongue. "And I lost."

Sam shakes his head. "No."

"You telling me if things hadn't gone down like they did, you'd be having me over for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, man? Inviting me into your nice clean lawyer house, letting Uncle Dean show the kids the best way to salt and burn a corpse?" He tries to laugh, it comes out a rattle, the rattle turns to a cough. The dull pain in his chest shows its still got teeth yet, biting deep. Dean waves his free hand at the stricken expression on Sam's face. "Doesn't matter. I don't care."

"I care."

Dean pauses. "Yeah. You were always like that. But it doesn't matter, Sam. 'Cause she died and I'm still here. She won _then_. But I guess…I guess I win now."

It sounds shitty when he puts it like that, but Dean thinks Sam gets him anyway. If anyone was ever going to, it was always going to be Sam.

"I don't…I don't want to be her anymore." Now that he's saying it, his voice gets even smaller, hard to choke out.

"I know. I'm sorry. I should've never… I just thought that if it was _you_ , you wouldn't…" Sam's fingers shut tight over Dean's. "I should've never. I won't."

Dean shakes his head. "I'm just me, man. Just Dean. And that's gotta be good enough, or…"

Sam straightens in the chair, hands squeezing hard enough to hurt. Something wakens in his eyes, desperate and crazy. Not dark like when he talks about killing the thing that took out Mom and Jess, but light. Like dawn, cresting the horizon and dragging a new day behind it. "Dean," he interrupts. "Are you…? Do you mean…?"

"I mean, we're pretty good together, right?"

Sam laughs, smile spreading wide across his cheeks and going all the way up into his eyes, still lit up from inside. "Yeah, Dean, we do all right."

There's a tap on the door and the nurse sticks her head in. "Mr. Bukovitz? The police would like to speak to you while we get some readings from your brother here."

"Yeah, sure." Sam squeezes Dean's fingers again. "Be right back," he says to Dean. Dean nods, too wasted-weak to do much more. "Dean." Halfway to rising, Sam pauses, meets Dean's eyes. "I see you, Dean. I always did." He touches Dean's face and Dean doesn't try to pull away from it. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Dean looks at the nurse, sees in her eyes what he already knows, what he can feel spreading out cold and hot from his busted up heart. "Yeah, Sammy, I'm okay."


End file.
